The present invention relates generally to a customer management system. More particularly, the present invention relates to a customer management system particularly well suited for application within a sales-related industry, such as the automobile sales industry.
Attempts have been made to design a system, such as a software system, that effectively manages interactions with customers of a single seller organization or multiple seller organizations within a sales-related industry. Attempts have also been made to design a system, such as a software system, that improves the efficiency and accuracy of the collection of customer interaction data by a single seller organization or multiple seller organizations within a sales-related industry. Generally speaking, those attempts have generated systems wherein the decision of whether to make a record of specific customer interactions is broadly subjective in nature and largely dependent on the judgment of a human being, such as a seller's employee. Within those systems, in instances when the decision is made to record an occurrence of customer interaction, the decision as to exactly what information should be recorded is also broadly subjective in nature. Accordingly, many of the customer management systems available to seller organizations within sales-related industries produce inconsistent data. Accordingly, information that can be gleaned from that data (e.g., information obtained based on data analysis) will be tainted with inconsistency.
A seller's manager who accesses statistics derived based on inconsistent records of customer interaction has no way to know how complete or accurate the statistics might be. Without generally uniform treatment and processing of multiple types of customer interactions, significant customer interactions are inaccurately reflected in the statistics. In fact, there are many reasons why some significant customer contacts are not reflected in the statistics at all. For example, some customer interactions get lost because the customer interaction with the seller was through an undocumented Internet contact, because the customer contacts the seller by filling out a survey that is filed away and forgotten, or because the customer interacts with numerous employees of the seller including one or more who make no record of the customer contact. Seller-customer interactions get lost for all of these and other reasons.
Inconsistent and/or incomplete customer interaction information can detrimentally affect the employee's decision making process or strategy implementation. For example, an employee of a seller organization who accesses information pertaining to a particular customer's interactions with the seller may be presented with generally inconsistent and potentially incomplete information. Decisions and/or strategies based on inconsistent and/or incomplete information are susceptible to inaccuracy.
For these reasons and others, systems that do not provide a generally standard format for documenting different types of customer interactions and/or systems that place unnecessarily high reliance on the diligence of individual employees to keep records of customer interactions can be problematic. Many employees have little motivation or incentive to keep detailed records for their employer. A system that requires too much of an employee's time and energy, however, can also be problematic in that the employee is forced to expend time and energy that can otherwise be devoted to following up on sales contacts and completing sales.
The present invention addresses at least one of these and other problems and offers advantages over the prior art.